I was looking at something completely non-train-related the other night and followed a link to http://www.historicaerials.com/ It could prove useful to people modelling in any scale. They don't have the whole US; nowhere near it. But they do have the major metropolitan areas of California! I looked already - no old aerials of Barstow yard. :tb-hissyfit: But they show my house - or where it would be someday, as far back as 1948. Man there were a lot of orchards!
Amazing! I am just looking at 1940 aerials for Tacoma. This would have made planning my layout so much easier.... Great stuff, thanks for sharing! Cheers Dirk
Interesting. I quickly found the neighborhood on Houston where I grew up-- as it was back then... And I found the MGM back lot in Culver City, California before it was sold off. I once designed a switching layout of a portion of the back lot. In both cases, the aerial was not enough by itself to make a complete understanding, but combined with material from other sources, it adds. Clear enough to make out shapes of individual railroad cars.
Looks like it has potential. But how does it work? I tried, and it doesn't zoom. So I certainly cannot get any idea if the view offered is worth while. In order to get a decent view of my old home town, must I sign up for something? Boxcab E50
Interesting. It seems to work OK, but zooming is non-intuitive, as are many other controls. And the resolution is just OK. Newer Google images (or others) have higher resolution of modern images. But for historical images? I didn't have much of a personal experience base to judge it.
You have to click the zoom or pan controls and then click on the picture. And then switch back and forth as you zoom in on what you want but need to move. I found the major roads overlay useful to get close, then switched to all roads once I got zoomed in to a reasonable level. The view is limited somewhat by the pictures they started with; the 1948 pictures won't be able to compare with modern images. And the whole point of it is to find what you want, then BUY a print from them.
This is what threw me off. Usually, when there is a "zoom" button, etc, you just click it as needed. No other manipulations are necessary. Boxcab E50
